Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk1.djvu/95

Rh and shall find fulfilled what I have here related, then remember your friend, and quit yourselves like men; and "commit the keeping of your souls to God in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator."

Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair, It is kept all the year long. It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter than vanity, and also because all that is there sold, or that oometh thither, is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, "All that cometh is vanity." (Eccles. i. 2, 14; ii. 11,17; xi. 8. Isa. xl, 17.)

This fair is no new-erected business, but a "thing of ancient standing; I will show you the original of it.

Almost five thousand years ago, there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving, by the path that the pilgrims made, that their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair—a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity; and that it should last all; the year long. Therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, as harlots, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not.

And, moreover, at this fair there are at all times to be seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues and that of every kind.

Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, thefts murders, adulteries, false-swearers, and that of a blood-red colour.

And as, in other fairs of less moment, there are the several rows and streets under their proper names, where such and